Flávio Costa

Flávio Costa
Personnel
birthday	September 14, 1906
place of birth	Carangola , Minas Gerais ,  Brazil
date of death	November 22, 1999
Place of death	Rio de Janeiro ,  Brazil
position	midfield player
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1926-1936	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro	145 (15)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1934-1937	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro (player-coach)
1937-1938	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro (assistant coach)
1938-1945	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
1944-1950	Brazil
1946	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
1947-1950	CR Vasco da Gama
1951-1952	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
1953-1956	CR Vasco da Gama
1955	Brazil
1956	Brazil
1956-1957	FC Porto
1962-1965	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
1965-1966	FC Porto
1 Only league games are given.

Flávio Costa (born September 14, 1906 in Carangola , Minas Gerais , † November 22, 1999 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian football player and coach . In his home country he is considered one of the greatest coaches of the first half of the 20th century. He looked after the Brazilian national team from 1944 to 1953 and became vice world champion with her in 1950.

The player

From 1926 to 1936, Flávio Costa played 145 times in the black and red jerseys of Flamengo Rio de Janeiro and scored 15 goals. Mostly he was to be found in midfield. From September 1934 he acted as a player-coach.

The highlight of his playing career was winning the state championship in Rio de Janeiro, the Campeonato Carioca , in 1927.

The trainer

Flamengo

Costa trained the Flamengo Rio de Janeiro team in Rio de Janeiro from 1934 to 1937, 1938 to 1945, 1946, 1951 to 1952 and from 1962 to 1965 . Between April 1937 and September 1938 he also worked here as the assistant trainer of the Hungarian Izidor "Dori" Kürschner .

Costa particularly benefited from this encounter, as Kürschner's arrival in Brazil brought an innovation boost to local football. For example, the Hungarian introduced the World Cup system that had been in use in England since the 1920s and introduced other more modern practices.

Costa won four national championships in Rio de Janeiro with Flamengo between 1939 and 1944. There were no national competitions such as a Brazilian championship in those days.

Flávio Costa has accumulated the longest tenure of any Flamengo coach.

Vasco da Gama

From 1947 to 1950 and from 1953 to 1956 he coached Flamengo's city rival, the CR Vasco da Gama .

Under the leadership of Flávio Costa, Vasco won several national championships - even unbeaten in 1947 and 1949. In addition, he led Vasco da Gama in 1948 to victory in the Campeonato Sul-Americano de Campeões , the "South American Championship of Masters", the forerunner of the Copa Libertadores .

National coach of Brazil

From 1944 to 1950 he coached the Brazilian national football team and led them to the vice world championship in 1950 at a tournament in his own country .

In three appearances at the Copa America under Flávio Costa's leadership, Brazil had to be satisfied with second place twice. The 7-0 success in the 1949 final against Paraguay , which took place in Rio de Janeiro, is still a record today. Ademir de Menezes also scored the only hat-trick to date in the Copa América Finals.

He also served the Brazilian national team for one game in 1955 and for around four months in 1956 as a coach. In his last game on August 8, 1956, with a 0-0 win against Argentina in Buenos Aires, he won the first play of the Taça do Atlântico , a private invitation tournament for the best national teams in South America. The third participant was Uruguay .

Parts of his term of office ran parallel to his activities as a club coach.

Flávio Costa has accumulated the third-longest tenure of all Brazilian national coaches , although besides Mário Zagallo and Carlos Alberto Parreira they have two more coaches to show more games.

FC Porto

In the 1956/57 season Costa had his first tenure as a coach at FC Porto in northern Portugal. He replaced an old friend there: Yustrich was still a goalkeeper at Flamengo in the 1930s. He came to the club in the preseason and ended a title slump that had persisted since 1940 and was even able to get the double.

Flavio Costa did not succeed here, however, although the runner-up was quite respectable with only one point behind SL Benfica .

Comeback at Flamengo and end of career in Porto

After the end of the season Costa returned to Rio de Janeiro and at the beginning of 1962 rejoined his home club Flamengo. In the first year of his third comeback with the black-reds, there was still nothing to celebrate. In the end he eliminated the stars Dida and Henrique and the later world champion Gérson left in a dispute and moved on to Botafogo. In 1963 Costa was again the master of Rio with Flamengo. It was the ninth Campeonato Carioca for him and the fifth with Flamengo, which now had 14 titles.

1964 did not succeed in the state championship. But Flamengo made it to the finals in the sixth Brazil Cup, the Taça do Brasil . There, however, the FC Santos, inspired by Pelé , was the measure of all things. The red-blacks went down 4-1 in the Paulistani port city and at home there was only a meager 0-0. The historical top class of the men around Pelé in those years is also proven by the fact that this was the fourth of a total of five successes in a row by Santos in this competition.

In mid-1965 he left the Mengão for the last time and he made a comeback at FC Porto. This time he followed Otto Glória , another great Carioca , in the coaching bench. Glória was still a student of Costa in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1940s. After he helped Benfica to numerous titles in the 1950s, he led Porto runner-up for the fourth time in a row. Benfica, driven by the great Eusébio, was dominant in Portugal in those years .

The season ended unsuccessfully for Costa and Porto. Eight points behind the champions, Porto was only third behind the two major Lisbon clubs. The now almost 60-year-old master coach left the coaching business without a title. The Portuguese national team meanwhile left for England for the soccer world championship and caused a sensation there under coach Otto Glória.

Statistical overview

Coaching career
From	To	society	title
1965	1966	FC Porto (Portugal)
1960	1961	Sao Paulo FC
21/01/1962	07/22/1965	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro (RJ)	1963 - National Championship of Rio de Janeiro
1956	1957	FC Porto (Portugal)
1/04/1956	8/08/1956	Brazilian national team
13/11/1955	13/11/1955	Brazilian national team
1953	1956	CR Vasco da Gama (RJ)
17/02/1951	21/12/1952	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
1947	1950	CR Vasco da Gama (RJ)	1947 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro 1948 - Campeonato Sul-Americano de Campeões 1949 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro 1950 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro
14/05/1944	16/07/1950	Brazilian national team	1949 - Copa America
10/03/1946	21/12/1946	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
8/12/1938	18/11/1945	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro	1939 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro 1940 - Torneio Rio-São Paulo 1942 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro 1943 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro 1944 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro
16/09/1934	10/01/1937	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro
Player career
From	To	society	title
1926	1936	Flamengo Rio de Janeiro	1927 - State Championship of Rio de Janeiro

Statistics with Brazil
S.	G	U	V
56	35	9	12